


Still a Hero

by spectralFelinae



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, It's sort of both at the same time, No shipping, Rated T for Gabe swearing a few times, Team as Family, also let me have secretly good guy reaper please, just family relationships, let me have gabe being a father figure to the younger memebers of overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 14:04:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8251832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectralFelinae/pseuds/spectralFelinae
Summary: Gabriel couldn't count how many tiles he had heard her say that specific phrase, it was  practically her catch phrase, but he could remember several times when it really mattered. He just didn't expect the remembrance to be mutual, was all.





	

The first time he had heard it, he had been much younger. A different man, even. Ange wasn't new to the base, no, not by this point. That wasn't to say she had been there as long as Jack or himself, or Ana and Reinhardt, but not nearly as short of a time as some of the others among their ranks. Those famous words of hers were first heard by Gabriel on a really bad day. A strike team had just got back from the field; a mission had gone wrong, one of the less banged up operatives had told him. So wrong in fact, that it had left two of their team barely clinging to the last dregs of their lives. As the soldiers - his crew, his _family_ \- were whisked away into the operating room with her in tow, she had stopped. Not long, of course, but just long enough to rest a slim hand on the shoulder of one of the more anxious cadets and reassure them before hurrying off.

_“Don’t worry, heroes never die.”_

  


* * *

  


The the next time he had heard it, it was on a mission.  
It had been one of the few times Blackwatch and Overwatch came together as one cohesive, terrifyingly efficient unit and it was something to behold as it always was. But something somewhere had gone wrong - something always did, and this time it was a loose end that hadn’t been properly disposed of. By the time someone noticed the Talon straggler behind their ranks, five of their agents had been picked off before a final shot between the eyes took care of the Talon operative. Angela - _Mercy_ , he had to remind himself. she was _Mercy_ on the field - had been with them in the blink of an eye, gold wings spread wide and her new Valkyrie suit smudged with blood and dirt.  
Quickly, with a wave of a hand, there were those words of hers again, and Reyes could only watch as their five fallen operatives were brought back without a single scratch on them, in the exact spot they were standing with a gold flare of light.

_“Heroes never die.”_

  


* * *

  


He heard them several more times over from that day on. it was mostly on missions, but the third most notable time Reyes could remember, he had said them, not her.  
He had begun to get suspicious of Talon sinking their claws into Overwatch, and god, if it wasn't starting to show. Gabriel had taken to skulking around the base, much like Jesse had when they first drug the brat out of Deadlock. People thought he had started to go off of the deep end, and maybe he had. Maybe his worry was just baseless paranoia. Maybe there _wasn’t_ Talon activity within Overwatch. Then again, his instincts had never lead him astray before. So when his instincts told him today was going to be a rough day, he listened.  
McCree had told him that he seemed ‘more nervous than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs’ and he was almost inclined to believe the bastard on that. He had almost also started to believe his worry was ill founded. Up until he heard the shouting that was. Loud, barking orders and clipped tones rang through the halls of the watchpoint, originating from somewhere around the medbay. Hesitating for only a moment, Gabe took off towards the commotion with a weary rush, suspicious of the sudden sounds. By the time he had gotten there, whatever confrontation that had happened was over and a tired, pale Angela was left alone, sitting on the floor of the hallway outside her operating room.  
Slowing to a walk he gradually came to a stop beside the young doctor and sat down beside her on the cold, uncomfortable floor. And with only a small amount of prodding, she spilled everything to him - or well, everything that she was legally allowed to that is. Some man, some _child - he looked like he was around McCree’s age and the thought of the cowboy, his fucking **son** , in the state Ange described to him had a tight coil of anxiety worming its way into Gabe’s gut_ \- had been found by some of their agents while in Hanamura, Japan. He was barely alive, and looked almost like he had been run through an industrial meat grinder. So poor was his state of being, that Angela told him that possibly over half of his body would have to be replaced with cybernetics and she wasn't even sure if he would make it through the night.  
In that moment, Gabriel was suddenly aware of just how young Ange was to be such an accomplished doctor, how young she was to be one taking care of soldiers and brutal casualties no less. Gently, he had knocked their shoulders together before slinging an arm around her and hugging her, tight and warm, a reassurance to ground her to the present.

_“Hey, it’s going to be okay, nena. Heroes never die, right?”_

The soft smile and quiet _“you’re right”_ he got back was enough to loosen some of the dread in his gut.

  


* * *

  


The next memorable time he had heard it, his world had fallen apart. He had thought that this would be the last time he ever heard her say that.  
Gabriel couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. He had been _god damned right all along - Talon had been meddling in Overwatch since the beginning, and he had been too late to do anything about it_. He had been too late to notice the bomb, too late to save the headquarters and so, so many people. By the time she had found him, he was barely conscious. Barely alive.

_“Gabe, Herre Gud… Hold on, please. Heroes never die, remember, so please just... hold on.”_

  


* * *

  


The most recent time he had heard her say it, he was a new man. A different person, trapped somewhere in the gap between alive and not-alive.  
He had changed so much, they all had, in the ten years since Overwatch had fallen. The Overwatch he had helped build, that was once his family, was no more. He had been turned wayward, had pretended to be one of Talon just to rid the world of the moles who had ripped his family from him. By the time the patchwork group had found him again, no - had found _Reaper_ \- he wasn’t sure if they remembered the man under the mask, and he almost didn’t want to know. So he wouldn’t let them know.  
Oh, he was sure some of them had suspicions of who he was - McCree most of all, he was practically the boy’s father - but he didn’t want to admit to the fact that he had been playing pseudo-villain to them for several years now. Everything he had done haunted him, weighed his ghostly body down with the invisible weight of a world, with the weight of a lifetime. Guilt and regret, hissing accusations loomed close so when it happened, Gabriel had nearly lost himself in the middle of a mission.  
None of them had expected Reaper to bite the dust on a mission, the man seeming nearly immortal, healing himself with the souls of every Talon agent they felled. But he had, and then, the next thing he had known, a new coolness was coiling around him, before his world was bright and _gold_. And then, he had heard her say _it_ , as his senses were gradually reorienting themselves.

_“Heroes never die.”_

And then, he had almost lost his head, crying. Nearly started blubbering like the time he had told McCree that he could still dress like a ridiculous cowboy while he was in Blackwatch.  
_He_ was a _hero_.  
Sometime after the mission, when they were all on the flight back to Gibraltar, Gabriel had found his way back to Mercy’s side, and had sat himself down in the empty chair beside the doctor. Pushing down a wave of nostalgia at the feeling, remembering when he had sat beside her years ago in a hallway after finding Genji, he carefully laid a hand on her shoulder. The action was almost ill fitting, as if he was worried that he would hurt her just by letting some part of himself touch any of the others, but he followed through with it. And with a voice just as feather light as his touch, he choked out a quick phrase to the bewildered doctor before retreating back to his self-claimed corner.

_“Gracias, nena. I remembered, but I didn’t expect you to still count me as a hero..”_

**Author's Note:**

> -This fic was made possible by this wonderful tumblr post [here](http://octopus-soup.tumblr.com/post/150937363951/the-appreciation-he-deserves)! Please go check it out!  
> -A big thank you to [Nix](http://sleepy-eyedwanderer.tumblr.com/) for helping with Spanish translations and also helping to proof read this!  
> -I can't speak Swedish so please tell me if I messed up Mercy's one line. Multiple sources online told me that was Swedish for something along the lines of 'my god/good lord/oh god'  
> -Thanks for reading! Feel free to follow me on [tumblr](http://spectralfelinae.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to!


End file.
